... but are you sure it makes sense to use historical CAGR data without also confirming that the company in question has a bright future too?

Are you sure that, "Have you taken each one of PFE's drugs, sales for each drug, and lined up the patent expiration dates to get an idea what might happen in the future? Have you done something similar with CHS's store counts to find out what each concept is contributing, where each concept is in its growth cycle, where margins are, where sales might go? What do you think about HD's move into non-store activities? How are you going to evaluate those?", will give you a better advantage in predicting the future than what you've read on this board? Additionally, are you sure by doing those things that your outcome would be very dissimilar?